[meteorite-list] Russia Says Jetliner Near-Miss Was With A Meteor, Not A Satellite

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2007 08:40:17 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <200703291540.l2TFeH925205_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/russia-hits-back-at-space-blunder-claim/2007/03/29/1174761621087.html
  
It was a meteorite, not a satellite, says Russia
Sydney Morning Herald
March 29, 2007 -

A Chilean jetliner approaching New Zealand came within 20 seconds of
being hit by blazing objects hurtling down to Earth, New Zealand
aviation officials say.

US space officials said today it was most likely a close encounter with
a disintegrating meteor, denying assertions from New Zealand officials
that the LAN Chile plane narrowly missed being blasted by Russian space
debris that was returning to Earth ahead of schedule.

While it is not uncommon for space junk to fall into the South Pacific,
"it is very uncommon to have a plane in the middle of it," said Airways
New Zealand spokesman Ken Mitchell.

Mitchell, whose agency handles air traffic control in the region, told
New Zealand National Radio that the flaming objects were likely space
junk arriving 12 hours ahead of Russian projections.

The airline said in a brief communique that the pilot, who was not
identified, "made visual contact with incandescent fragments several
kilometres away" during the Monday night flight, and that the incident
was reported to authorities in Chile and New Zealand.

But Russia's Federal Space Agency issued a statement saying that its
cargo ship Progress M-58 had fallen back to Earth according to the
timetable it had warned aviation officials about previously.

In other words, the Russians say the fragments of Progress didn't plunge
into the Pacific Ocean east of New Zealand until about around 2330 GMT
Tuesday. The fiery near-hit with the jet was reported about 12 hours
earlier, a time when the cargo ship was still attached to the
international space station.

"Unless someone has their times wrong, there appears to be no
correlation," said Nicholas Johnson, orbital debris chief scientist for
NASA's Johnson Space Centre.

Johnson said there are no other reports from the US Space Surveillance
Network of other re-entering space junk at the time, so the flaming
objects must have been fragments of a meteor.

The Lan Chile pilot flying from Santiago, Chile, notified air traffic
controllers at Auckland after spotting the flaming objects just five
nautical miles (9.2 kilometres) in front of and behind his Airbus 340.

That distance would not have given the pilots much room for manoeuvre,
according to World Airliner magazine editor Tony Dickson. "You're
talking about 20 seconds and that's not a lot" of separation, he told
National Radio Thursday.

About 50 meteoroids enter the Earth's atmosphere every day - mostly
burning up as they speed in - said Bill Ailor, director of the Centre
for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies at the Aerospace Corporation of
El Segundo, Calif.

Those that survive to hit the earth are called meteorites.

By contrast, about 150 pieces of man-made space junk fall back to Earth
each year. About two-thirds of these are unplanned but still known and
monitored, and larger man-made space equipment, such as the Progress
resupply ship, have motors to guide them back to Earth, Ailor said.

If they are calculated to have more than a 1 in 10,000 chance of hitting
people, they are shifted to a safer path, he said, though small errors
can lead to large variations in where the debris hits.

"For de-orbit, everything has to be lined up right ... and your math has
to be right and also your time has to be precise," Ailor said. "There
are lots of places where you can have problems."

No one has ever been killed by man-made space junk, Ailor said, though
in 1997, an Oklahoma woman was grazed in the shoulder by falling material.

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http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/news/stories/s1885157.htm

NASA queries space junk in NZ flight drama
ABC Radio Australia
March 29, 2007

The American space agency, NASA, has cast doubt on whether it was
Russian space junk that came close to hitting an Auckland-bound
plane over the Pacific Ocean.

But as New Zealand correspondent Peter Lewis reports, NASA says the
plane still had a near miss with something from out of this world.

The pilot of a Lan Chile airbus reported seeing flaming debris
falling within a few kilometres of his plane which was en route
from Santiago to Auckland on Tuesday night.

New Zealand civil aviation authorities were alerted and began
investigating whether an obsolete Russian satellite which was
due to crash back to earth yesterday had re-entered the atmosphere
early.

But NASA, which keeps close tabs on space junk, now says the
satellite splashed down on schedule and therefore the Chilean
plane more than likely had a close encounter with a meteorite.

Earlier, Ken Mitchell, of Airways New Zealand, believing the near
miss involved the satellite, described the incident as a serious
safety concern.

He said then, an explanation would be sought from Russia on why
the re-entry time was incorrect.
Received on Thu 29 Mar 2007 11:40:17 AM PDT